Indian child slavery - in pictures

Tens of thousands of girls as young as 12 are trafficked from India’s remote north east every year. Many are the daughters of tea estate workers, and end up working as servants in the Indian capital New Delhi or trafficked on to the Middle East and the UK. Many suffer physical and sexual abuse at the hands of employers and few receive the wages they were promised

Saturday 1 March 2014 19.05 EST
First published on Saturday 1 March 2014 19.05 EST

Tea workers in Assam picking leaves on a plantation. Illegally low wages on Assam’s tea estates mean parents cannot afford to look after their children and their daughters are easy prey for traffickers who lure them to Delhi with promises of a new life, then sell them as domestic slavesPhotograph: Gethin Chamberlain for the Observer

Arjun Tati, 55, and Mukti Tati, 50, with a picture of their daughter Binita Tati. She was trafficked to Delhi from Laluk, Lakhimpur district, Assam, at the age of 14. Her distraught parents have not seen her for three years

Kusma Takri, 27, child trafficker in Laluk, in Lakhimpur district, Assam. She was taken to Delhi to work as a servant for a notorious child trafficker and later agreed to provide him with girls from her home village. She is paid 4,000 rupees per girl

Rabina Khatun, 18, in her home on a tea estate in Laluk, Lakhimpur district, Assam. She was trafficked to Delhi at the age of 14 and was later gang raped. She has given written permission for her name and photograph to be published to expose the trade

Sub-inspector Nirmal Biswas, officer in charge of Laluk police station, Lakhimpur district, Assam. He admits police will struggle to cope with the volume of trafficking from the region until the core issue of poverty is tackled by government

Women on the books of a maid placement agency raided by police in Delhi in connection with the trafficking of young girls from Assam. Photographs supplied by Laluk police station, AssamPhotograph: Handout

Ramesh Tanti, father of Somila Tanti, 18, who was trafficked to Delhi from the Nahorani tea estate three years ago to work as a domestic slave. He is speaking to her on the phone on the way to rescue her, trying to establish the address of the house where she is being held